Chapter Six - How Many Times Will You Betray Me?
It was a sharp pain that awakened Christine. She lay on her side in the velvet-draped bed and the whale-bone stays of her jabbed mercilessly into her side.
She rose slowly, wondering how she had let herself just drift off to sleep like that. Then she gasped at the sight of the black lace curtain. It has been lowered...her Angel was near.
As she drew up the veil, she listened for any sound of his presence. She heard the faint ripple of the lake against the stone steps, the hiss and flicker of the candles...and the harsh, quick rasp of a pen against paper.
He was there, just as he had been that first morning, seated at the organ. His back was turned, he was leaning over the work before him.
Surely he heard her steps as she went up to him. But he did not turn. The only acknowledgment he gave of her presence was a tense straightening of his shoulders beneath the black velvet robe.
"Angel," she whispered as she came up behind him and laid her hand on his shoulder. Still, he did not look at her.
"Good evening, Madame de Chagny," he said as he reached up and gently pushed her hand from him.
His indifference numbed her. All these months, his words echoed in her, drowning out her own heartbeat...
Christine, I love you.
"Angel, I have come home."
"Home for you, Madame," he said quietly, "is in number 57, Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore."
Christine walked around the organ to face him. There was a new harshness to his face, one that she did not remember. She had not seen it before, even in his anger. His lips were tight, a thin line creased between his brows.
Half his face was still covered by a mask, the mask that had never stopped haunting her.
When he looked up at her at last, there was no emotion in his eyes. But his hand gripped the amber glass pen until his knuckles were as white as his mask.
"Angel, please...will you listen to me?"
He did not answer her, but a sharp crack spoke for him as the pen shattered in his grip. He swore to himself as a small, sharp piece of glass sliced into his palm.
In a second, Christine was on her knees beside him. Taking his hand, she dabbed at the blood with her handkerchief.
"Leave me...go back to your husband."
He closed his eyes as she tended to his hand. If he looked at her again, he might weaken, might forgive her the unending days and nights of loneliness she had condemned him to.
"I have no husband now."
"Is that the reason for the mourning attire, then? My condolences, but I've no time to comfort grieving widows."
"He is not dead. Angel, I have left him. I want to stay with you, to stay by your side forever."
He leapt to his feet and stared down at her. What did she expect from him now?
"Christine, how many times will you betray me?"
